


Fissures

by elistarr87



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:48:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elistarr87/pseuds/elistarr87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extended scene from 8x21 "The Great Escapist"</p><p>"Castiel wonders if they will ever move past this. The endless loop of him and her. Always at odds. Always here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fissures

Castiel’s beginning to regret telling Naomi to bite him.

Not the defiance - he’ll never regret the defiance. The anger roils inside him when he remembers the pain and terror and confusion in Kara’s voice. The burnt-out holes where her eyes had been. The sound of her neck snapping.

No. He’ll never tell Naomi what she wants. Not willingly. He realizes that since she has to torture him it means that, cursory angelic mind-reading aside, she can’t just go inside his head and take the information she needs.

Naomi can’t erase his memory until he gives her the location of the tablet. And that will never happen.

He wishes, however, that he’d used a different turn of phrase to express his defiance.

Castiel’s currently strapped down in one of her special chairs. Apparently he’s been here before. Many times, if she’s to be believed. Back at the Biggerson’s in Santa Fe, Esper had hit him in the face a couple times between her questions. That had been unpleasant, but nothing noteworthy. Ion had still been dutifully searching every Biggerson’s Castiel had visited in the last few weeks.

Naomi had sent Esper to help Ion, telling him to contact her if they found the tablet. Then she had dragged Castiel back to Heaven with her. Now it was just the two of them in her office. The way it had been for eons, to hear her tell it.

Because of her, he can’t remember.

This is a construct, Castiel reminds himself. The office, the chair, her instruments of correction and pain. It’s because they’ve taken vessels.

He wonders how it was done without vessels. How Naomi could reach inside his wavelengths with her own and rearrange them. His brilliant, orderly, angry sister.

“It’s easier without vessels,” Naomi tells him, reading his mind. Castiel lets her read the outer edges of his thoughts. What she really wants is buried deep. Deep, deep behind the walls of what she has let him remember. The things he feels. The beings to which the emotions are tied. The guilt and the sadness and the shame and the love and the anger and the regret. Each layer makes her nose wrinkle in disgust. Her eyes grow progressively harder.

Naomi’s repressed his grace. His vessel lies naked in her chair, both arms and legs strapped down. She still wears her grey pantsuit, immaculate despite the blood that circles her vessel’s mouth and stains her white teeth with red.

There are bloody bite marks all over him. Chunks of Jimmy’s skin ripped out of his cheeks and neck and stomach and thighs. He can’t heal them with his grace repressed. It’s so much more than the physical biting between the vessels. Her grace swells and rips away pieces of his grace.

He could match her power, Castiel thinks. Naomi is still a largely unknown entity to him, but he thinks he might be powerful enough to fight back now that he's aware of what’s happening.

He would fight back right now, but that would require shifting his concentration from hiding the tablet’s whereabouts. Naomi’s focusing on his mind, his grace, when she should be focusing on his vessel.

Most angels underestimate the human body. He had, once. Or maybe he hadn't. Maybe she had just taken that memory from him, too.

Another surge of anger mixed with horror and sorrow pulsates from Castiel’s consciousness as Naomi tears a bite from his hip, taking some bone with her as his emotions make her reel backwards. A splash of gore dribbles from her lips, the first stain on the lapels of her suit coat. If she notices, she doesn’t seem to care.

“You want to know what I’ve taken from you?”

Of course he does.

“I want nothing from you, _sister_ ,” Castiel sneers back.

Castiel is aware that Naomi knows he’s lying. He doesn’t care.

“I have been nothing but good to you!”

The lights dim and Naomi’s presence expands for a moment, the true power of herself briefly overpowering the vessel she wears. Castiel idly wonders about her vessel. What they’d thought when they had agreed to house an angel. What they're thinking now.

“I should have destroyed you ages ago. But one of your comrades would always vouch for you. Anael. Uriel. Balthazar. Rachel. Hester. Samandriel. And many others.”

Naomi pauses after each name and watches the pain and guilt flicker over Castiel’s face as he remembers his part in the destruction of each angel. He’s overwhelmed by a desire for Purgatory once more, damned to think on his sins for all eternity.

“If I was- if I am such a _spanner_ in your works then why did you risk so many angels to get me out of Purgatory?”

Castiel doesn’t expect an answer. Naomi surprises him.

“Purgatory is not meant for angels. It was obscene that one of ours should be trapped there.”

He gives her a small smile.

“What would the neighbors think, hmm?”

She rolls her eyes at him.

“If you want to oversimplify it, then I suppose so. Yes. Though there’s more to it then that.”

“And what would that be?”

“I love you.”

Castiel startles, then glares.

“You- you love me?”

Naomi looks at him with exasperation.

“You’re my brother. And I love you just as I love all of our siblings.”

“This is what you would call love?”

Castiel is outraged. He pointedly looks down at his naked, bleeding vessel. His hands and feet strain against the bindings.

“I only want what is best for you. For all of us.”

“And you express that by taking away who we are? Our ability to choose? You can’t-”

“Don’t you dare pull the ‘free will’ card on me! I remember, not so long ago, being told that free will was the new way. I never had any desire for the plans of you or the archangels. I had a job, and I did it well.”

Castiel remembers a city street, frozen in time. He remembers a power so vast and uncontrollable, disguised in a small, blond, bespectacled human body.

He remembers how in his arrogance he had presumed to destroy her.

“You sound like Atropos.”

Naomi smiles fondly.

“Atropos was a great friend of mine. We often talked about you. Until you drove her away from heaven and back to her sisters.”

“There was no place for Fate in-”

Naomi slams her fist into his face. Castiel feels the nose break, more blood dripping down to the floor. Naomi leans over him, whispers in his ear.

“Until you had no use for free will. Until you declared yourself God. Until you slaughtered thousands upon thousands of your own family even as they cried for mercy. Until you made the survivors of your purge sing ‘Holy Holy Holy’ in terrified submission at your feet.”

Naomi begins to sing the hymn now, in her true voice. The breath from her vessel tickles his eardrum.

< _Holy Holy Holy_ >

The way she sings makes it sound like a dirge. Like a curse.

< _is the Lord God Almighty_ >

Castiel doesn’t want to remember. He wants to stretch out all of his wings and hide his face in shame.

< _who was and is_ >

This was the song Castiel and the other seraphim were to sing for their Father. It was not meant for him, it was never meant for him. He can feel the unmoving lips of Naomi’s vessel surrounding his ear. Feel the teeth on the shell.

< _and is to come!_ >

He wants to die.

< _Amen_ >

She bites his ear off, spits it on the floor. Castiel screams. Naomi ignores him.

“I was there. Singing with the remainder of the Host. I felt unadulterated fear for the first time that day.”

Castiel can’t look her in the eye anymore.

“That is what ‘free will’ gets you. You were a warrior. A powerful, high-ranking one. But not an archangel. Not God. Why? Why did you think you could be what you were not?”

He has no answer for her.

“There is no shame in being what you are. There is no shame in being a weapon. But you failed to acknowledge your place, and because of that we are now an endangered species.”

Castiel finds his resolve again. A conversation on a park bench.

_I am not a hammer._

His defiance rushes back to him.

“This is still wrong. I was wrong, then. And you are wrong now.”

Naomi looks at him incredulously.

“You dare- ?”

“You have punished me. You have been punishing me since my creation, or so you said.”

“Punished? I am trying to help. I have only tried to help.”

Castiel inclines his head, ignoring the pain that shoots through the left side.

“Do not,” his voice is dangerously low, “Do not lie to me. After everything you made me do-”

His voice catches as he remembers the last look on Samandriel’s face. The never-ending room full of the corpses of Dean Winchester. The real Dean Winchester, face unrecognizable underneath the damage he’d wrought, flinching from his touch.

Naomi is indignant.

“I pulled you out of Purgatory! I attempted to give you purpose once more, with your precious Winchesters! And when you didn’t feel like you deserved that, what did I ask you?”

Castiel remembers. Sheila, Fred Jones, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

_What do you want to do?_

“I have tried so hard with you! I let you flit around, healing babies, playing the good shepherd role you’re so enamored with. And still it’s not enough. It’s never enough.”

Naomi looks close to tears. Frustration and anxiety line her vessel’s face. Castiel feels compassion for her, momentarily, but then his rage overwhelms him.

“And how would I know that? From what you’ve told me, most of my existence has been a lie. Your lie. How will I ever know what I’ve discovered, what I’ve learned, who I am, if you’ve scrubbed it away every time?”

Naomi stalks away from him to sit behind her desk. Gathering her composure.

“This is what I do. This is why I was created.”

“I can’t believe that. Our Father would not-”

Naomi laughs. It’s sharp and violent with little humor.

“As we established earlier, your version of our Father is woefully lacking in reality.”

Naomi looks wistful. And so very tired. She gives Castiel a small, bitter smile.

“I really thought I’d fixed you.”

“I am not a thing to be fixed.”

She says nothing in return. They sit in uncomfortable silence. She looks away from him. Castiel continues to stare at her, but uses her distraction as a chance to subtly struggle against his confinement. She doesn’t seem to notice.

It’s Naomi that breaks the silence.

“Have you apologized for anything you've done? To anyone besides Dean Winchester?”

Castiel thinks it over.

“No. Well, I’ve apologized to Sam as well.”

She tuts, still looking away from him. Castiel doesn’t think he’ll manage to escape, but he continues to try.

"Are you actually sorry?"

Naomi continues to look away, her question obviously rhetorical. It still gives him pause.

“You did choose them over us. Humanity over us, really.”

Naomi looks at him now and Castiel’s movements cease as he returns her gaze.

“You always do, Castiel. You always have. Ever since our Father made the little beasts.”

Castiel tries to process her words, but he can’t. The memories of watching the earth, its creatures, the humans, they’re all there. But he recollects with detachment, a vague overview. There are gaps in the memories, Castiel realizes with horror. Gaps that have never bothered him until now. Naomi had taken away his capacity to care.

“And yet, you still manage to override my work every time.”

“Get out of my head!”

It’s a snarl of fear and anger. Naomi stands from behind her desk and moves around it, approaching him.

“Stay away from me! What have you done to me? What have you taken from me?”

She stills by his head, looking down at Castiel with disgust and pity. He jerks away violently, as far as the restraints will allow him.

“Who- ? Have I chosen others before? Have I loved others before? Tell me!”

Naomi leans down, whispers into the remains of his left ear.

“You’ll never know, will you, angel?”

He screams again. It starts as a scream through human vocal chords and ends as a wail in his true voice. It dies out slowly as he trembles. Naomi lets him finish.

“We’ve wasted enough time already, brother.”

She’s all professional now. Castiel can only shake with a combination of destructive fury and debilitating despair.

“Where is the tablet?”

They’re back to where they started. Castiel wonders if they will ever move past this. The endless loop of him and her. Always at odds. Always here.

And he’ll never be allowed to remember.

“Where is the tablet?”

Castiel had been enjoying the respite from the torture. His vessel and his grace ache where they are fused. Where they bleed out onto the sterile white floor of her office.

Hopefully Esper and Ion will not return soon, empty-handed, the Biggerson’s search unsuccessful. Let Naomi think the tablet’s out there.

He hopes she won’t kill him. Although, if she does, it probably won’t stick.

_You don’t even die right, do you?_

Has she killed him before? Has she scoured memories of other resurrections?

Castiel focuses on the memories that he still has. Of his siblings, friends, loves. He doesn’t think she has fabricated these memories. They feel real to him. They feel real because there’s pain and joy and beauty and nostalgia and so many other conflicting emotions he’s sure that she can’t make him feel.

He thinks of Anna’s bravery. Uriel’s passion. Balthazar’s loyalty. Rachel’s integrity. Hester’s tenacity. Samandriel’s goodness.

He thinks of Meg’s adaptability and her love.

He thinks of Sam’s forgiveness.

He thinks of Dean.

_I need you._

Castiel narrows his eyes at Naomi.

“Bite me.”

She does.


End file.
